Present & Promote: How to write a Creative CV (tips from the net)

For present and promote- and for myself i need to create a CV that will introduce me to the creative industry and say “hiya, give me some work!”, it needs to be a CV that goes in the “In tray” and not in the bin. Whilst the CV needs to be eye catching, i want it to be clear and professional looking also.

Below are some tips about what NOT to do in your CV, i think the don’ts are very important because there are alot of mistakes that don’t seem huge but can make an employer think twice about putting you in the maybe pile.

1. Provide irrelevant personal info- unless stated in the job description things like your height, netflix membership or favorite food are not necessary to introduce yourself as a professional.

2. burying important information: highlight how you benefit the employer your aiming for, HIGHLIGHT instead of bury underneath every single GCSE or A Level result you got – unless these are particularly relevant

3. spelling errors, poor grammar, typos: THIS IS NOT THE PLACE TO MAKE SILLY MISTAKES- YOU DO NOT WANT TO LOOK ILLITERATE 🙂

4. unexplained gaps in employment- this rings warning bells for potential employers- if there is a gap in your employment a short explanation should be present e.g. off work due to illness/injury or re-entering education

5.LYING OR MISLEADING INFO: this is most important- NEVER lie on your Cv especially when it comes to skills and qualifications, whilst i would like to say i am well versed in all areas of Adobe Suite, i know that my skills lie in photoshop and lack in illustrator, its better for me to say i’m happy to train further in the ones i am unsure of as opposed to me saying i can do it, when i cannot.

6. A long CV full of waffle and page filling- 2 pages are your limit, 1 is even better. If its not relevant or recent enough do not include it, if you do need to include it add a previous employment page

7. (pasted from an article as it sums up the idea very well)

Meaningless introductions

Does your CV have a paragraph at the top that goes something like:

“Dynamic, enthusiastic, sales oriented I.T. literate, results driven manager with several years people management experience seeking exciting and challenging new opportunities in the blah blah blah…”

Yawn.

Your CV has got to hit the recruiter smack bang between the eyes! It’s got to make them sit up, spurt hot coffee from their mouths as they scramble across their desks for the phone to call you and appoint you on the spot!!

Or, to put it another way, your CV has got to get you noticed and invited in for interview. So an opening paragraph that says everything and nothing at the same time is not going to do it.

Ditch it.

In its place, consider crafting a short, simple and benefits focused headline about yourself. For example, “Senior Librarian with 10 years experience of managing online resources in the health sector.”

That’ll do nicely. It might not be perfect but it’s better than what you had before.

Journalists do this all of the time of course. They write headlines that tell you what the story is about but tease you just enough in order to encourage you to read on. Your opening, personal headline should do just the same.

Now there are many other tips out there, but now i am going to look at physical examples of great creative CV’s:

i really like the idea of putting skills in a chart and showing how developed they are- especially as i am inexperienced with adobe illustrator and inDesign, yet i can show progress this way and willingness to learn more.